


when i'm awake i make the same mistakes they make

by synecdochic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Imported, Jossed, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-06
Updated: 2011-11-06
Packaged: 2018-05-30 17:53:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6434449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synecdochic/pseuds/synecdochic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Originally posted <a href="https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/508549.html">2011-11-06</a>.)</p><p>This was written before Avengers came out and so has been thoroughly Jossed, but I was thinking about the ways in which Toni Stark would be different than Tony Stark, and this is what happened.</p><p>Title from Motion City Soundtracks' "Calling All Cops".</p>
            </blockquote>





	when i'm awake i make the same mistakes they make

The meeting is not horrible.

That's about all Steve remembers of it, afterwards. Somewhere inside his head, part of him is babbling hysterically about being across the table from _Thor_ son of _Odin_ the _Norse god_ , part of him is babbling hysterically about the very quiet woman who reminds him so much of Peggy (except Peggy never _dressed like that_ ), and a _really big_ part of him is babbling hysterically at him about being seated next to _Howard's daughter_ who is _older than he is_ (and now that he knows, he's been looking for all the cues, seeing Howard in the tilt of her mouth and the quirk of her eyebrow and especially in the snide comments she's been making every time their discussions start to run aground and that always somehow manage to needle them back on track), but nobody actually interrupts them shouting imprecations about how Steve has no right to be doing what he's doing, so. He'll count it as a success.

Qualified success.

The meeting breaks up when a harassed-looking man in an ill-fitting suit opens the door without knocking, says, "Excuse me, Captain," and executes a complicated-looking gesture in midair. The quiet woman (either Natalie or Natasha; she hasn't been directly introduced to him yet but Steve has heard people call her both) and the archer excuse themselves (her politely, him coolly) and trot out of the conference room; Thor ( _Thor Odinsson_ ) beams like the puppy he's been reminding Steve of from the beginning, booms something about valiant battle, and follows. Steve's just closing his mouth and wondering if he should be following when Miss -- Dr -- _Toni_ tosses the tiny ... sliver of glass ... _thing_ she's been playing with down on the table. (He stifles a wince to see it, but of course it's not actually glass and doesn't shatter.)

"Well, that does it," she says. Her voice is serious, but there's an impression of laughter lurking around the edges, like she's incapable of taking anything too seriously. "Daddy has whistled for his children. So, if you aren't yet expected to come running whenever Fury crooks his little finger through one of his multiple proxies, that must mean you're _persona non grata_ about as much as I am, hm? Great, that's good, that's actually good, believe it or not, come on. Let me guess, they've got you staying here. Probably in some shitty sub-basement with an Army cot shoved in a corner or something, am I right? How close am I? No, no, don't bother, you winced, that means I'm right." (It takes her one breath to deliver that entire slurry of words.)

"Um," Steve says.

Toni lets her feet fall from the table (where they've been since the meeting started, and Steve has been trying _so hard_ not to look at her legs even if they are hidden away behind a pair of baggy cotton pants covered in grease stains) and pushes herself out of the chair. She leaves the file folders she'd distributed at the start of the meeting where they are, but picks up the battered leather satchel that was sitting under her chair that they were originally produced out of and slings it over her shoulder, shoving the glass thing into her pocket. "Come on," she says, brightly, and the next thing Steve knows, she has his elbow in a grip that's as shockingly strong as her handshake was earlier and is walking him down the corridor of SHIELD headquarters.

Steve hasn't actually left SHIELD HQ since he was brought here the first time. Colonel Fury has been promising to find him a native guide to this surprising century he's found himself adrift in, but it's only been six days, and the Colonel keeps telling him that it's best to start slowly. Part of him wants to start running now and never stop. Part of him wants to find a deep, dark hole (like the cot in the, yes, basement, that they've done their best to make look like something familiar and still smells wrong) and pull the hole in over top of his head.

Now that they're both standing, now that Toni is moving along next to him with a ground-devouring stride and forcing him to keep up with her through nothing more than force of will and a grip he could get out of if he really wanted, he realizes she's tall enough that there's barely an inch of height difference between them. She's wearing heavy engineer's boots only half-laced-up, their soles thick enough to cushion her feet but thin enough that they don't add much height. Her mother (whoever she was) must have been tall. Howard wasn't, not like this.

"I really don't think I'm supposed to leave the headquarters," Steve says, hesitantly. He can't decide if he wants to be talked out of it or talked into it. (Somewhere inside his head, he is standing in the center of a New York street turning circles and cudgeling his brain into trying to make sense of the lights, the sounds, the _people_.)

Toni stops as they reach an elevator that Steve hasn't seen before and reaches out to push the button. (She knows her way around the building, that much is clear.) He gets the definite impression he's disappointed her, but all she says is, "Up to you. If you want to let SHIELD dictate every little bit of your life for the rest of however long it's gonna be, hey, no skin off my nose. But let me tell you right now, Fury's the kind of manipulative asshole who'll get his claws into you until you're too scared to take a piss without him giving you permission and holding your dick for you, and, you know, call me crazy, somehow everything I've ever heard about you tells me you aren't the kind of guy who'll cope with that kind of shit without going off your rocker. If I were you, I would -- well, if I were you, I'd probably be holed up in a hotel room for a week-long orgy of masturbation, it'd be a sin not to, but given the colors you're turning right now I'll say that's probably off the menu. Anyway. If I were you, I'd make it real clear from the outset that you aren't SHIELD's trained monkey. And there is nobody in this building right now who has a better idea of what you're going through, and all the ways _not_ to cope with it, than yours truly."

Steve knows he's bright red -- he was in the army, yeah, and he's no stranger to salty language, but he has a feeling hearing those words from a woman's lips will shock him for quite some time -- and he'd have interrupted her halfway through if he could've gotten a _word in edgewise_ (he's wondering if her superpower is _not having to breathe_ ) but her last words clear any thought of protesting her crudity. His vision actually hazes red, he's suddenly so furious; he can barely breathe, and he clenches his fists until he can feel his knuckles creak and counts backwards from twenty because he _will not hit a woman_ no matter how much she's making him want to.

"You have _no idea_ what I'm going through," he spits out, when he thinks he has enough control of himself that he won't say or do something unconscionable. "Have you ever lost everything you knew in your life? Suddenly realized everyone you've ever known is _dead_ and has been for years? Thought you were dying, thought you were dead, and then opened your eyes and found yourself -- found yourself --" There aren't words for it. Oh, God, he can feel the ice water swirling around his ankles, can feel the sharp edges of the plane's broken glass pressing around him, feel the darkness --

And then there's a palm resting against the center of his chest, warm and solid and _real_ , and oh, God, her skin is so warm, and the look she's giving him has no hint of mockery at all. "No," she says. "I was only gone for four months. But what they did to me was about as bad -- different neighborhood, same idea -- and SHIELD's idea of getting me help afterward was to send an agent to nag my PA into scheduling time for him to _debrief_ me." Her inflection makes the word 'debrief' into a viler obscenity than any he's heard fall from her lips yet. "So yeah. I know a little bit about what you're going through. And you deserve more help than I got."

Her words shock him into silence. Shock him into looking at her, really _looking_ , adding up all the tiny telltales: the dark circles under her eyes, the sudden self-defensive curl of her shoulders, the grooves around her mouth and eyes that look fresher than they should. "I --" he starts, and has no idea how he can possibly finish.

The elevator dings.

Toni reaches behind her with the hand that isn't pressed against Steve's chest, sliding it against the edge of the door as soon as it's fully opened. (The lack of elevator operators is another thing he's been trying to get used to.) "It's up to you," she says, "it will never not be up to you," and there's a fierce look in her eyes telling him someone, somewhere, took away her right to choose what happened to her, and that says more than anything else has up to now about how this brave new future isn't necessarily as enlightened as everyone's been telling him it is. "But if you come home with me, I can guarantee you at least forty-eight hours of peace and quiet and answers to any questions you have." Her lips twist a little, and the wry mockery is creeping back in. "I can't necessarily guarantee you forty-eight _uninterrupted_ hours, but crime never sleeps and Pepper's gonna pounce on me about some bullshit meeting or another sooner or later. Elevator's gonna close in a second. We getting on it before it does, or not?"

Steve closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He feels like he's never going to be warm again, and he feels like his skin is bruised and paper-thin and the slightest shock will puncture him, and the thought of leaving this building again makes him want to curl up in a little ball and whimper. But Toni (Toni _Stark_ , Howard's daughter, and how could he not have seen the same stubborn tilt of the jaw and the same tendency to bowl straight over any objections) is the first person he's seen look at him with that clear straightforward understanding mixed with a complete lack of pity, the first person who hasn't looked at him and seen _Captain America_ , a national treasure brought back to life as though someone had tripped over the box he'd been stored in in the attic. He still doesn't know what to make of her, but nothing is clearer to him than the fact she looks at him and sees _Steve_.

And hey. He's faced down Johann Schmidt and saved the world. He's _Captain America_. He's not going to let himself be afraid of the streets of his own damn city, his own damn country, even when it's like nothing he's ever seen before out there.

So he opens his eyes, and Toni's still staring at him like she could stand there all day, and the warm reassurance of her hand on his chest feels almost, almost, as comforting as his shield used to. He clears his throat. "Yeah," he says, "yeah, I -- yeah. Thank you."

One edge of her mouth creeps upward. She lets her hand fall away from him, and he tries not to let on that he misses it the second it's gone. "Come on, then," she says, and takes a step backwards into the elevator. "We'll stop and get any of your shit that you can't live without. Because, let me tell you, once you see my place, you are _not_ going to want to come back for it. C'mon, c'mon, you have to step _into_ the elevator for it to take you somewhere, it's not gonna eat you even _if_ the idiots used Otis instead of Stark, I _swear_ I could build a better elevator than this in my _sleep_ \--" 

Her words wash over him as she catches him by the elbow again and pulls, and he lets her tug him through the process of picking up his things from the nest in the basement Colonel Fury had built for him (the only thing he really cares about is his shield, but they brought him clothes and he supposes he'll need them), and by the time they step out onto the streets of Manhattan, Toni squinting against the sunlight and fishing a pair of sunglasses absently out of her bag as she chatters away, Steve almost feels like the block of ice inside him is starting to -- finally -- melt away.


End file.
